Element's Blunt Defense of Selling Encrypted Chat to Governments
Description
A screenshot of a post from the official 'Element' account on Mastodon (@[email protected]). The post is a direct, unapologetic statement addressing controversy around their business model. The text reads: '@amatecha @matrix @liaizon element.io/blog/the-online-saf... gives an idea of our position. And no, there are no backdoors. Yes, we fund Matrix dev by selling encrypted messaging to governments, which includes police: if you don’t like that then please feel free to use a different app.' Below the text is a link preview to an Element Blog post titled 'The Online Safety Bill: An attack on encryption'. The preview image has a green background with white swirling lines and the phrase 'Own your conversations.' This post became a flashpoint for discussion in the privacy and open-source communities, highlighting the ethical complexities of funding secure, open-source communication tools by selling services to state and law enforcement agencies. The company's defiant tone - essentially 'take it or leave it' - was particularly notable
Comments
18Comment deleted
Element's business model is basically a Schrödinger's cat of privacy: the message is simultaneously secure from the government and paid for by the government, and you don't know the state until the support contract is signed
Sprint review at Element: 1) ship the double-ratchet, 2) toot ‘no backdoors’ on Mastodon, 3) invoice the Home Office for the `/gov/compliance` microservice - privacy and procurement in the same commit
"We're not adding backdoors, we're just providing enterprise-grade observability features with advanced telemetry, comprehensive audit logging, and real-time compliance monitoring capabilities that definitely aren't backdoors because the documentation says so."
Nothing says 'we value privacy' quite like a company defending their business model of selling encrypted messaging to the very entities users are trying to encrypt their messages from. It's the cryptographic equivalent of selling locks to burglars and assuring homeowners there are 'no backdoors' - technically true, but the optics are doing more damage than a zero-day exploit. At least they're transparent about their funding model, which is more than you can say for most 'free' services that monetize your metadata instead
Legislators ask for a “secure backdoor”; architects just label it “attacker with a badge” in the threat model
Matrix: Gov funds the bridges, but Olm/Megolm locks the doors - backdoor budget meets zero-knowledge reality
Enterprise E2EE roadmap: promise “no backdoors,” monetize government contracts, then propose client-side scanning - aka a backdoor shipped as a mobile feature flag
can someone explain, please? Comment deleted
matrix supposed to be federated messenger. element is one of the android clients for matrix network. they generally provide app free for personal use and supposedly non free for organizations. Comment deleted
The article itself https://element.io/blog/the-online-safety-bill-an-attack-on-encryption/ Strongly advocates against breaking the end to end encryption as suggested in some UK's bill As far as I understand these Matrix dev guys are selling end to end encryption messaging solutions to governments and police and thus their regular users could be subject to wiretapping Comment deleted
I don't see the connection. If police uses the same e2e encrypted system and there are no backdoors, how does that lead to any kind of misuse? Comment deleted
idk, I think the admin meant it not that it is true in any way Comment deleted
make fake ID to enter some chats. social engineering basically Comment deleted
Bruh, but then no messenger is safe. If there is a group chat, a police officer could enter it no matter the platform. Comment deleted
generally - yes. but if there's only two persons talking it pretty safe. also on govs side there's problems with proving link between actual person and he's account. so if you aren't drug lord or didn't made something to Cia worth watching you probably okay Comment deleted
matrix is not part of the fediverse Comment deleted
But it is a federated chat system Comment deleted
generally, the fediverse is considered to be software that implements ActivityPub specifically. Sometimes other protocols are also included to mean fediverse, but I disagree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse Comment deleted